LoudLit.org pairs great literature with high quality audio performances that you can read and listen to online or download to your device for free.

As explained at the website: “Putting the text and audio together, readers can learn spelling, punctuation and paragraph structure by listening and reading masterpieces of the written word.”

When you get to the site you’ll see the new and featured literature selections along with a menu of novels, poetry, children’s stories, historical literature, and short stories that include titles such as:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Great Expectations

Jane Eyre

The Scarlet Letter

Annabel Lee

The Raven

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Selected Shakespearean Sonnets

Briar Rose

The Little Match Girl

The Declaration of Independence

The Gettysburg Address

The Gift of the Magi

The Tell-Tale Heart

And more!

Again, you can listen to the free audiobooks via your web browser or download them to listen on your mp3 player/iPad/iPhone.

At this website you’ll find an ingenious list of Christmas-themed activities that will stimulate reading, writing, story-telling, and vocabulary development. You’ll also find suggestions for creating acrostic poems and playing some language arts games. Some of the ideas are better suited to a classroom environment – but many can be tweaked for homeschooling.

This website offers a free compilation of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa stories. Simply click on a title on the menu to read the story online. Some of the stories have a link to the original source material on the Net. You can just quickly scan stories, and then head to your bookstore or library to find the tales your children will enjoy in book format.

LibriVox is an organization that gathers volunteers to record literature in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. At the website you can access holiday-themed stories. Not only can you download the MP3s and listen to the stories, most contain links to the full text so you can read along – all for free! Here are some titles:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Andersen

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

Twas the Night Before Christmas (A Visit from St. Nick) by Clement C. Moore

This website provides free audiobooks of classic literature, stories, and poems in MP3 format that you can download to your MP3 player or listen to on your computer. (There is a free conversion app for iTunes as well.) You can also read the text of the literature on the webpage or download a pdf and print it out to read offline.

When you get to the site, you’ll see an introduction and links to the ways you can browse for information including by:

Books – You can listen to titles such as Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, Common Sense, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Gift of the Magi, Just So Stories, A Little Princess, The Merchant of Venice, Rip Van Winkle, The Scarlet Letter, Treasure Island, The Ugly Duckling, The Wind In The Willows, and more.

Readability – Click on any grade level from K-12 to find a suggested list of suitable titles based on the Flesch-Kincaid reading level scale.

This is a terrific resource for homeschoolers, unschoolers, and carschoolers!

This website offers free classic audiobooks that you can download and listen to. There are over 50 titles in MP3 files or M4B for iPod, iPhone, iPad and iTunes.

Some of the titles include:

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Legend of Sleepy Hollow by W. Irving

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Dorothy and the Wizard by L. Frank Baum

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Click on any title and a new page opens with a Wikipedia summary of the book, and links to download the material. Depending on the size of the file it may take several minutes to download. If you select the MP3 file, once downloaded, the audio book will launch and begin playing automatically. There are no pictures or text – just narration. So, if you have one of these classic books, you may want to use it and follow along as the narrator reads the story.

About.com is an ad supported website that was founded in 1996. First called The Mining Company, they slowly transformed into About.com.

They say they have nearly 1,000 Experts that write for About.com and are one of the most visited sites on the Internet with over 25% of the U.S. visiting each month. They help users discover, be inspired, and learn about topics ranging from parenting and healthcare to cooking and travel.

The About.com Calendar of Children’s Books is a treasure trove of resources available to help support students reading at any level all brought together in one convenient location. When you arrive on the monthly calendar page you’ll see the list of monthly reading themes. These themes are based on the seasons, various cultural and government named holidays and recognized social causes, sometimes a famous person or an author’s birthday, and so on. Scrolling down the page you’ll find some general reading help for each theme and recommended reading. Then the calendar for the month will outline in chronological order; any notable date or historical event or famous person’s birthday – anything that might give you a reason to pull out a book and read!

As a bonus, across the top of the page is a menu directing you to age appropriate help for parents of children ages 0 – 3, 4 – 8 and 9 – teens designed to help raise readers. There are articles and book recommendations for new and prospective parents, help for transitioning from picture to chapter books, resources for reluctant readers, and even recommended reading lists.

To give you a little taste of what awaits you at this wonderful website, here is a little clip of the April 2014 calendar.

Here are some books and tips to help you raise a reader who is enthusiastic about books. Learn about the importance of reading aloud to your child at every age, the value of audiobooks, and resources for locating exceptional books for elementary and middle school students.

LoudLit.org pairs great literature with high quality audio performances that you can read and listen to online or download to your MP3 player for free.

As explained at the website, “by putting the text and audio together, readers can learn spelling, punctuation and paragraph structure by listening and reading masterpieces of the written word.”

When you get to the site you’ll see the new and featured literature selections along with a menu of novels, poetry, children’s stories, historical literature, and short stories that include titles such as:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Great Expectations

Jane Eyre

The Scarlett Letter

Annabel Lee

The Raven

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Selected Shakespearean Sonnets

Briar Rose

The Little Match Girl

The Declaration of Independence

The Gettysburg Address

The Gift of the Magi

The Tell-Tale Heart

And more!

Again, you can listen to the free audiobooks via your web browser or download them to listen on your mp3 player.